Oscar Profile #128: Marni Nixon

Born Margaret Nixon McEathron on February 22, 1930, Marni Nixon was never nominated for an Oscar. They don’t give Oscars for what she contributed to films, but without her, numerous screen classics, including several Oscar winners, would not have been the same.

A former child actress and singer, Nixon’s film work began in 1948 when she sang the voices of the angels heard by Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc. The following year she provided Margaret O’Brien’s singing voice in The Secret Garden. In 1953, she dubbed Marilyn Monroe’s high notes on “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She made her Broadway debut in a minor role in The Girl in Pink Tights in 1954.

Nixon worked closely with Deborah Kerr on 1956’s The King and I for which she molded her singing voice to Kerr’s well known speaking voice. Kerr was so pleased with her work that she requested Nixon to dub her singing in the following year’s An Affair to Remember and trusted Nixon to dub her songs without instruction to which the actress later mouthed the words in perfect synchronization.

She was hired to provide the singing for Natalie Wood on 1961’s West Side Story against the actress’s knowledge and wishes. Surrounded by secrecy, she had to sing the words to Wood’s mouth movements instead of the actress having to mouth the words to her singing, which was the usual practice. She was also brought in to sing “Tonight” in the quintet reprise for Rita Moreno when Betty Wand, who had dubbed Moreno’s other songs, developed laryngitis.

In 1964 she famously dubbed Audrey Hepburn’s singing voice in My Fair Lady, a fact widely known prior to the film’s release, which is said to have cost Hepburn an Oscar nomination.

Nixon made her first on-screen appearance in support of the original Fair Lady, Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.
Nixon taught at the California Institute of Arts from 1969 to 1971 and joined the faculty of the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara in 1980, where she taught for many years.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she hosted a children’s television show in Seattle, winning four local Emmys. She also toured with Liberace and Victor Borge and in her own cabaret shows. On stage, she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Off-Broadway’s Taking My Turn. In regional theatre and Off-Broadway, she played the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet; Fraulien Schneider in Cabaret and Eunice Miller in 70, Girls, 70.

She voiced the part of the grandmother in Disney’s 1998 film, Mulan and later appeared on Broadway in James Joyce’s The Dead and the early 2000s revivals of Follies and Nine. In 2008, she toured as Mrs. Higgins in Cameron Mackintosh’s revival of My Fair Lady, a role originated on Broadway by Cathleen Nesbitt who played the piano to Nixon’s dubbing of Deborah Kerr’s voice in An Affair to Remember more than half a century earlier.

The first of her three husbands was Oscar winning composer Ernest Gold (Exodus). Their son was Andrew Gold (1951-2011), singer-songwriter best remembered for his hit song, “Thank You for Being a Friend”, which later became the theme song for TV’s The Golden Girls.

Marni Nixon is still going strong at 83.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE KING AND I (1956), directed by Walter Lang

Since the movies began to talk, actors and actresses, even those who could sing, had been dubbed by singers with more powerful singing voices, but generally the actors and the singers did not collaborate. The King and I was an exception, and a happy one.

Deborah Kerr, she of the unique speaking voice, worked exhaustively with Marni Nixon to ensure that Nixon’s singing voice matched her speaking voice flawlessly. The result was such that few at the time guessed that Kerr did not do her own singing as Anna Leonowens on such unforgettable songs as “I Whistle a Happy Tune”; “Hello Young Lovers”; “Getting to Know You” and “Shall We Dance”.

AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (1957), directed by Leo McCarey

Nixon’s contract with NBC at the time did not permit her to work full time on dubbing Deborah Kerr’s singing voice once again on An Affair to Remember, but that was no obstacle for Kerr who by now trusted Nixon to the point that she did not have to have close collaboration with the singer to know that Nixon would do full justice to singing Kerr’s Terry McKay in character.

WEST SIDE STORY (1961), directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins

Nixon was forced to work without Natalie Wood’s cooperation on their Maria in West Side Story. Wood had recorded all of her songs, thinking they would be used in the film, but the producers over-ruled her. When she finally heard Nixon’s singing, even she agreed that the dubbing made sense.

Nixon also filled in for Betty Wand when that singer developed laryngitis and was unable to dub Rita Moreno’s portion of the quintet reprise of the song “Tonight”.

MY FAIR LADY (1964), directed by George Cukor

Audrey Hepburn, who did her own singing charmingly in Funny Face and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, recorded some of the songs for My Fair Lady but the producers felt her vocals weren’t strong enough. Once again Nixon does a flawless singing interpretation of the actress’s voice while rendering a faithful interpretation of the songs.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965), directed by Robert Wise

Finally the public got to see the movies’ by then premier dubbing artist in person. Unfortunately Nixon was difficult to pick out as Sister Sophia in her nun’s habit in the chorus of “Maria”.

You would have to have seen her on TV, attended one of her college courses or seen her on the stage to know what she really looked like.